POLLY
by Bronwyn Celtia
Summary: How did Shipwreck get Polly? Don't recall it ever being mentioned, so I decided to have KT ask him. Rated T for some language. I don't own GI Joe. I like to borrow Shipwreck and occasionally Hawk and some of the others.


POLLY

_Standard disclaimer: I do not own GI Joe. I borrow the universe and a lot of the characters for OMEGA. Thank you, Hasbro, for providing. (Especially the original four 12" Joes, who made MUCH better boyfriend material for my Barbies than Ken could ever hope to be!) _

_OMEGA is all mine, and I love "my girls". Constructive criticism is welcome. Sometimes, it's a bit of a fight to keep KT from being too 'marysue'._

KT Abernathy, known to the OMEGA and Joe teams as Lady Hawk, tossed another blueberry to Polly. Once again, the parrot caught it neatly, and downed it enthusiastically.

It was a rare trip to the Pit for Lady Hawk. Tirnagog wasn't all that close to this location, and she'd had to be flown in by one of the Joe pilots, rather than come in her Tomahawk. She really needed to see about replacing at least one of the two Sky Strikers that Pistol's ineptitude had cost the team. She was here for a meeting with Hawk, their mutual CO General Colton, Keel Haul, Admiral Ledger, and some politico she'd never met before. However, when she'd arrived, neither Ledger nor the politico had gotten in yet, Colton was dealing with a stack of paperwork, and Hawk had been called out to the field.

It was rarer to find Polly sitting in a corner of the rec room, quiet and dejected, with no Shipwreck in sight. Mutt had told her the sailor had been pulled to deal with something at Great Lakes, and had been forced to leave Polly behind; apparently, the current man in charge at Shipwreck's "A" school had promised to shoot the parrot on sight. He might have been joking, but Shipwreck wasn't willing to take the chance. His only request was that she be allowed out of his room at least an hour a day, and not ever put in a cage.

Shipwreck. Lady Hawk sighed a little. There was a walking conundrum for you, she thought. He could be loud, brassy and argumentative; hit on nearly every female over 21 he ever set eyes on; and had some… interesting ideas about how to avoid most work, especially if it was dull, routine, or unrelated to boats. He berated Polly fiercely at times, too…not that the bird didn't give as good as she got, usually.

There was more to the sailor than that, though. Lady Hawk knew a few things even his own team mates didn't seem to. How he spent some of his days off-duty at a pediatric ward, taking Polly with him to bring some fun and laughter to the sick and injured children. If he made it from one paycheck to another with money left, it went to an orphanage. They all knew he'd crack bad jokes, tell salty stories, and sing bawdy songs to cheer up teammates. He always had your back in a tight spot: he was all business when he needed to be. And while he might threaten to hand Polly over to one of the others for target practice/decoration material/dinner, if anyone actually tried something, he'd offer to use them as fish bait.

There was also the fact that, in Lady Hawk's opinion, no one as lazy as Shipwreck claimed to be could look so damn _fine_ just from BeachHead's admittedly rigorous PT sessions.

"First you kidnap my bird, now you're spoiling her?"

As if summoned by her thoughts, Hector 'Shipwreck' Delgado appeared at Lady Hawk's side in the rec room.

"I didn't kidnap her, I liberated her," Lady Hawk informed him regally. "And I'm not spoiling her, I am trying to lift her poor crushed spirits. Honestly, going off and leaving her alone!"

"Trust me, she was safer here," Shipwreck plopped down on the couch next to her. Polly squawked once, and settled onto her favorite perch… his shoulder. "Behaving yourself, Polly?"

"Yup," Polly chirped. "KT loves me!"

"Lady Hawk has a soft spot for hopeless causes."

"Only some of them," Lady Hawk shook her head. "Polly, yes. Then again, I don't think she's totally hopeless." She held up another blueberry, and Polly took it from her hand this time.

"Blueberries?"

"She likes them."

"She'll be shitting blue for a week. Thanks a lot!"

"You do know it's more your fault than hers that she makes a mess where she shouldn't, don't you? Or was she already over five when you got her?" Lady Hawk popped one of the berries into her own mouth.

"I have no idea how old she was when I got her," he shrugged. "What difference does it make?"

"A young, hand-reared parrot can be taught to only use certain paper to shit on," the woman replied. "Like house-breaking a puppy, litter-training a kitten, or potty-training a child."

"And you know that how, exactly?"

"A little thing called _research_. You should try it sometime. I do believe you can read."

"Sailor boy can't read!" Polly teased.

"I can read you the riot act, loud mouth," Shipwreck warned. Polly laughed at him. "Oh, I see you're teaching her insubordination, too?"

"Don't look my way for that one, _Sailor Boy_," Lady Hawk shook her head. "She gets that from watching you trying to give Duke, Flint and Beach ulcers."

"What are you even doing here? Things too quiet in the Lady's Palace of Never-Never Land?"

"Tirnagog, you goof, isn't Never-Never Land, it's part of the Celtic Afterlife," she informed him, not for the first time. OMEGA had gotten razed big time for their choice in HQ names, but only Pistol…who'd had no say in the matter in any case, ever got pissy, or even took the razing seriously. "Got called in for a meeting. Now I'm waiting for said meeting to actually happen," she replied.

"General Colton's gonna be disappointed you ain't in a skirt," Shipwreck smirked. She was wearing her day-to-day uniform of boots and cammos, with her light red hair braided down her back.

"This one time, he can live with it," she popped another berry into her mouth, and offered another to Polly. "I've been meaning to ask you. Where did you get Polly?"

"Before I joined Joe, back when I was on patrolling duty with the Navy," he replied, one hand reaching up to stroke the bird's feathers. "We nabbed this pirate. He had Polly in a birdcage…a _canary_ cage. Don't know how he originally got her in there. No way could she fit though that tiny little 'door' on the damn thing. She couldn't open her wings enough to even groom herself. I wasn't leaving her like that. I couldn't! So, I cut the cage off. Still not sure why she stayed with me…"

"Because you took care of her, maybe?"

"Maybe," he shrugged.

"What did you do to the pirate who had her caged?"

"Let her shit all over him," he grinned. Lady Hawk laughed. "Payback's a bitch, right?"

"It can be, Sailor Man; it can be!"


End file.
